Plan to Close University of Missouri Press Stirs Anger

By JOHN ELIGON

Published: July 18, 2012

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A tide of anger has been swelling here since May after the new University of Missouri president, Timothy M. Wolfe, disclosed plans to close the university's publishing house, stoking arguments over the institution's priorities and fueling an escalating national debate over the necessity of university presses and their future in the digital world.

Over more than five decades, Missouri's press has printed prized academic titles including ''The Collected Works of Langston Hughes,'' ''The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson'' and ''Mark Twain and His Circle.'' Word that it was shutting down after losing its $400,000 annual subsidy drew outrage from professors, students, authors and alumni, and from the sons of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and of the black historian John Hope Franklin. A news release that the university circulated this week announcing plans for a new publishing operation seemed only to intensify the venom.

''As I try to read this, I toggle back and forth between nausea and migraine,'' Andy Frisoe, who described himself as a friend of a Missouri Press author, posted on a Facebook page, Save the University of Missouri Press.

Such disagreements are playing out on campuses around the country, as tightening budgets have complicated efforts by university presses to keep up with the changing publishing marketplace.

Half a dozen universities have closed or suspended their presses over the past three years. Utah State's press had to join a consortium of university presses in Colorado to survive. Another press, at Louisiana State, was spared after cutting the staff and making other organizational changes.

''I really wish that universities would step up and say these presses are essential, we should fund them 100 percent,'' said Richard Clement, the dean of libraries at Utah State. ''I think that most presidents would tend to agree, but given the budgetary climate and situation, they have to make choices, and unfortunately the choices have not favored university presses.''

Scholars argue that university presses are vital for academic discourse. They publish erudite texts that commercial presses do not, giving scholars a forum to share and further research. Professors often rely on them to publish the works they need for tenure and promotion. But they are usually money-losing operations. The presses at the University of Chicago, Oxford and Cambridge are the only ones widely believed to be profitable.

In their early decades the bottom line did not matter. Cornell started the first university press in the United States in 1869, and the presses were set up to publish the research results of faculty. As time passed, however, presses were increasingly asked to generate revenue for their institutions. Now their future at many campuses revolves around two questions: Are presses part of a university's core mission, akin to an academic department? Or are they business investments, expendable if they fail to draw profit?

''Many institutions are grappling with these questions -- and all of them should, because support for scholarly communication remains vital, not just for scholars themselves, but for the university's ability to communicate with the world around it,'' said Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association.

Other universities have taken steps to revolutionize their publishing systems. Project Muse, which has published academic journals online as part of the Johns Hopkins University Press since 1995, began publishing full-length digital books in January.

After closing its press in the mid-1990s, Rice University reopened a digital-only operation in 2006, but it shut that down after four years. Rice's example revealed a difficult truth about digital scholarly publishing: it is still expensive. Most of the cost in producing scholarly writings comes before anything is printed on paper, through expenses like hiring people for peer review.

Speer Morgan, the editor of the literary magazine The Missouri Review, will head the new press. Under the University of Missouri's new plan, the more than 2,000 books already published by the existing press operation, which will make way for the new one after production of its fall books, will be digitized and promoted by university libraries, a news release said. The new press will publish about 25 titles a year in hard copy, slightly less than the current output of 30, and digital format, though most will be in print initially, according to Brian L. Foster, provost of the university's Columbia campus.

The university also will honor the contracts of authors signed to coming works and plans to publish the titles on its spring list, Mr. Wolfe said. Administrators do not know exactly how much the new model will cost, Mr. Foster said.

''One of the things that I believe is, if in fact we come up with a model that is more effective at disseminating scholarly work,'' Mr. Wolfe said last week in an interview, ''the other presses are going to have to look at this model and say, 'Can we do what the University of Missouri is doing?' ''

Before becoming president in February, Mr. Wolfe spent his entire professional career in business. When he announced in May that he would eliminate the press's subsidy, detractors said he did not appreciate its value. Mr. Wolfe defended the decision-making process, saying he relied on the university's chancellors and vice presidents who have lifelong backgrounds in academia.

But Mr. Wolfe acknowledged that he had never spoken to or consulted employees of the current press, and none of them were involved in the creation of the new model. Many critics said the new plan was vague and full of corporate jargon. They were concerned about the prospect that under the new plan students would be handling much of the work. ''Will established scholars be willing to work with such a haphazardly staffed press?'' Bruce Joshua Miller, a sales representative for university publishers, and Ned Stuckey-French, a professor at Florida State who has published with the Missouri press, wrote in a more than 1,500-word news release responding to the university's announcement. Mr. Miller and Mr. Stuckey-French have led much of the resistance, creating the Facebook page and an online petition that has gathered more than 4,700 signatures.

The administration seemed unaware that the press already was doing the supposedly new things described in the plan, Clair Willcox, the current editor of the press, said. The press, for instance, already publishes e-books, he said.

''The staff was enraged,'' Mr. Willcox said his colleagues' response to details of the new plan. ''They were looking at descriptions of what they already did. It suggests that somehow they weren't doing a good enough job over here.''

PHOTOS: Clair Willcox, the editor in chief of the University of Missouri Press, heads into work. A volume celebrating the more than 50 years of the press sits near the front desk. The press will close and a new, reorganized operation will take over. Over more than five decades, the press has printed prized academic titles. (A14); Steve Hammer works in the front office of the University of Missouri Press. Mr. Hammer is one of 10 employees left at the press. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUGUST KRYGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A18)